Unraveling Threads
by swiftwings13
Summary: She's been absent from the galaxy for five years. He's been running obscure smuggling routes and trying to forget. F!ExilexAtton, Lightside!Female!Revan, Carth Onasi guest stars as somewhat useful, Kreia is bad at playing nice. Whole crew shows up eventually. AU/Canon divergence.


(A/N: This was originally a drabble I posted on my star wars sideblog. It has since grown and so I figured I should at least acknowledge the thing I keep stealing away to write. Metar Cavira is my Exile from my first playthrough years ago. Her name is right from the built in name generator. She has a long history of invading my math notes and stealing lines in the margins of my worksheets. Review if you like, stay away if you are expecting Canon Compliance. I will never acknowledge that book.)

The Jedi exile, who was not a Jedi, slept in the copilot's chair for the entire flight from the Peragus Mining Facility to Telos. She woke occasionally to shift around in the seat and then pin him with her sleepy gaze before nodding off again. It was kind of remarkable.

Atton rubbed a hand over his face and stifled a yawn. He glanced at the Exile, a strand of her dark hair was stuck to her lips, and then settled back in the pilot's chair. They were surprisingly comfortable chairs for the type of craft, but he had a feeling that the Ebon Hawk had a lot of surprising additions. A soft grunt from his neighbor drew his attention back to her.

She was blinking owlishly, just beginning to sit up in her chair (she had it reclined as far as she could) when their eyes met. She froze and, for all his bravado and assumed ace pilot smoothness, Atton Rand stared back at her with equally startled.

"What time is it?" She mumbled the question sleepily, dragging her green gaze away from him and out towards the darkness outside the cockpit window. She swiped at her face

"03:00, I think." Atton tapped the screen in front of him and checked the autopilot. "We'll be cooling our engines in a nice Telosian hanger in under an hour."

"Fast ship." She commented, sounding genuinely impressed underneath the yawn that quickly followed. "Metar."

Atton frowned, "What?"

"My name is Metar Cavira." She fluffed her hair, it didn't improve the tangles that she'd acquired from sleeping in a chair, but it did help the flattened left side a little. Her hair was straight and shined like silk even in the unflattering light of the Ebon Hawk. It was short, like her sentence, ending in a blunt line just under her chin. She reached down the right side of her chair for the seat adjustment. The seat buzzed loudly as it moved gradually back into an upright position. She watched him too. The whole time, leaning against her chair and watching him with cat-like green eyes. When the chair finally stopped buzzing and clicked into upright she added, "So you don't have to keep calling me Exile."

He should have known what a shit show Telos would be when they were put on house arrest as soon as they landed.

Metar side stepped closer to him while the soldiers searched the Ebon Hawk under the watchful gaze of Kreia, the spooky lady who was definitely dead 36 hours ago.

"What'd you do?" Metar whispered to him, her hands clasped casually behind her back. She watched the soldiers with less suspicion than Kreia and more idle curiosity. It was like she was watching someone else's ship get tossed.

Atton just stared at her. Was she joking? She was the runaway Jedi and Kreia certainly was not helping them keep a low profile with all that Force talk and judgy eyes. "Seriously?"

"You _are_ the smuggler."

"You're the Jedi." Atton said. Really, if anything was going to land them in trouble it was going to be her. She was just...different. There wasn't a better word for it. Metar stood out like an albino kathhound. The shape of her was right, not too tall or too muscular, curved where she should be (admittedly he had gotten a better look than anyone who saw her in those scruffy mining clothes. Her ass deserved a shrine and her breasts were a bit uneven, yet still worth giving special attention), but she didn't match with anyone else in a crowd. She lacked the sameness that the republic officers banging around inside the Hawk had. Metar Cavira basically screamed "look at me! I'm an exiled Jedi. Arrest me!" and it was starting to drive Atton nuts that she couldn't see it for herself.

"Nobody here knows that." She replied with a wink.

"I know it." Atton jerked his chin in the commanding officer's direction. He was slightly taller than average (probably could get away with 6ft on his papers) and the orange and red Republic uniform made him look ill. He was watching them now, not his men, with unbridled suspicion. The little hairs on the back of Atton's neck stood straight up as their eyes met.

"He definitely knows it."

The Exile looked towards the officer and did some sort of little gasp thing that gave away the whole thing. She went ramrod straight at the sight of him. Her only movement was to reach out towards Atton, in what must have been pure reflex, and grab the sleeve of his coat. She twisted her fingers in the rough leather as she stared at the man like a dewback at the barrel of a gun.

Atton looked around the hangar, immensely uncomfortable with the sheer amount of Force swirling around the Exile right now. It churned like the sea and threatened to pull him in and drown him right along with her.

Atton had the vague impression of someone approaching them, but when he tore his attention away from the Exile he saw the officer standing white faced in front of them. Not Kreia.

"Follow me." The man said and he placed a hand on Metar's elbow. The gesture was surprisingly gentle. "We need to talk."

"You know her?" Metar was coming back to herself, her shoulders failing back to their usual slump.

The officer ignored her. He scanned the hangar for someone to give orders to. "You!"

A soldier stepping onto the entrance ramp froze.

"I want a full analysis of the nav computer. Understood?"

"Yes, Admiral Onasi."

Atton's stomach dropped. Admiral Onasi? The poster boy for the Republic? War hero and Savior of the Republic who fought alongside the redeemed Revan to destroy the Malak? Atton reflexively began counting Pazaak cards in his head. He had a terrible feeling about this, but by the time he opened his mouth to say so they were already being lead into the Hangar Manager's commandeered office.

"You and Revan," Metar said in a soft voice. "You're connected. I can feel it."

So much for not attracting attention.

"Can you tell if she's," Admiral Onasi's shoulders slumped as soon as he turned around to face them both. The confident and commanding man was gone. Standing in his place was shell of a man who had lost his heart twice. "Is she alive?"

Metar shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. "I only recognize her force signature. I'm sorry, but I don't know."

"But you knew her? She mentioned a friend who had left before the Jedi Civil War. I'm hoping that friend is you." Onasi said. A rasp of desperation entered his voice.

Metar nodded. "We didn't part on the best of terms." She squeezed her chest a little tighter.

Atton noticed and stepped forward, placing himself just in front of the Exile. "What's this got to do with our ship?"

"Your ship?" Onasi said, one eyebrow arching up and the corner of his mouth twitched upwards. "The Ebon Hawke is our ship. Revan left on that ship. Now it's back and I got an ex-jedi and a smuggler when who I need is Revan."

"Because you love her?"

Onasi looked past Atton to meet Metar's eyes. "Because there is a new Sith lord pecking at the Republic's eyeballs. The Jedi are gone and there's no one else the Republic will listen to on this."

Well that was an unsettling way to put it, but Atton had seen the truth with his own eyes. That _thing_ that they had left Kreia to deal with had definitely been Sith. Possibly dead too, but he didn't want to think about what a force wielding corpse meant about the universe. Atton shifted to the side so that he could gauge the Exile's reaction to all of this. He had the feeling that they were about to be roped into some galatic-scale do-gooder mission from which it was very likely none of them would return. Especially if there were more force wielding corpses roaming about.

Metar looked nervous, her green eyes darted towards Atton and then back to Admiral Onasi.

"I'm not sure why you're both staring at me."

"Because I need your help." Onasi said.

"Because you want to help him." Atton pointed his thumb towards the Admiral. "I'm not sure that we can say no. If it helps." _Don't tell him you can barely feel the Force._ Atton tried to mentally scream the words at her. It wouldn't help. The Admiral was desperate and in love and who knows what he would do with them if he found out that they couldn't actually help.

Metar winced and looked at Atton like he was jumping up and down and screaming like a five year old. Which he was, mentally. He stopped chanting the words over and over, hopefully she got the message.

"We can't promise anything," Metar began slowly, gathering her words like she used to gather the Force. "but if your hands are tied by the Republic. Ours aren't."

Admiral Onasi pressed his lips into a fine line. He looked first at the Exile then at Atton and then he spoke. "I have to detain you. Any ships arriving from Peragus are to be flagged for investigation since the station blew up. Your doing, I assume."

"We had help." Atton leaned back on his heels.

"Really? In my experience, Jedi don't need help in making trouble. It comes naturally to them."

Atton shrugged but didn't elaborate on the crazy assassin droid that had single handedly thrown Peragus into chaos before the Exile was even awake.

"Detain us then. Our ship needs repairs and fuel anyway."

Onasi smiled, "I can see why Revan liked you. I have you put in one of the safehouses we use for witnesses. You'll be free to move around the station but you will be monitored. If you're anything like the woman Revan described, I'm sure that won't be a problem."

Metar seemed a little stunned even as she nodded in agreement. "She talked about me?"

"All the time before she disappeared. At first I thought she had gone to find you, but when she never returned…." Admiral Onasi shrugged, his eyes flicked towards the large window that overlooked the hangar. "I think I know where she's gone, but the only thing that can prove it is the Hawk's nav computer."

The sounds of yelling and frantic, furious beeps ended the private conversation with the Admiral. They all turned to look into the hangar and Atton was not at all surprised to see T3 taze a Republic soldier and then ram into the shins of another.

"I told you that droid has a bad attitude."

"T3?" Onasi stepped towards the door. "Was it on the ship?"

Metar nodded, "It arrived at Peragus on the Ebon Hawk with me. I assumed it was Kreia's droid, but you know it?"

A electronic squeal filled the hangar. T3 was now wheeling wildly around the hangar being chased by the soldiers. Kreia stood to one side her opinion on the amusing scene impossible to tell thanks to her shroud of brown fabric.

Metar made a worried noise and hurried to the door. "Someone probably touched the hyperdrive. It's very sensitive."

Atton followed her out of the office with the Admiral right behind him. Metar flew down the steps and shouted across the hangar at the stupid, little droid to stop torturing the soldiers.

"T3 it's okay! They're just doing their job."

The droid spun around a soldier and then charged towards Metar, beeping and whistling the whole way.

"No, T3, I'm fine. Look, Atton's fine! They just want to ask us a few questions about Peragus." Metar answered.

"Ma'am," panted one orange and red clad soldier. His helmet had slid over his face and he was bent double as he tried to catch his breath. "That droid is a menace."

T3 feinted charging at the soldier. He who scrambled back instantly.

"Take them to holding and tell Lt. Grenn that I want him to handle this case personally." A helmetless soldier with an unfortunate amount of freckles and neat, bright red hair.

"I hope you know what you're doing." Atton said to her in a low whisper as Kreia approached.

"I'm a little rusty at following the will of the Force." Metar answered, and then a sly smile took hold of her lips. "Don't worry, Atton. I'll keep you safe."


End file.
